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The other day I chronicled the strange journey of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent site that is notorious for finding less-than-legal software, movies, TV shows, music…you name it. Sure, it’s wrong to steal content, no matter how you justify it -- people deserve to be paid for their work. After all, I don’t work for free, I fully expect to be compensated for my efforts. I have a wife and kids to provide for. I would guess you also do not labor for free.

However, that piece about the many domains the service has recently occupied, combined with something my colleague Mark Wilson brought up about the ridiculous porn filtering in the UK, got me thinking.

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There was a time when "activist investor" Carl Icahn actually owned and ran businesses, one of which was TransWorld Airlines (TWA), eventually sold to American Airlines. In an attempt to cut costs, TWA under Icahn outsourced reservation service to a call center built in a prison with prisoners on the phone. When you called to book travel you were giving your credit card number to a felon and telling him when you’d be away from home. Smart move, Carl, and very akin to what may have caused the post-Thanksgiving theft of 40 million credit card numbers from Target, the U.S. discount retailer.

Target used to do its IT all in the USA, then to save costs they moved IT to a subsidiary in India. Care to guess where the Target data breach came from? I’m guessing India. I’m also guessing that there will never be any arrests in the case.

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Windows Sysinternals has unveiled Disk2vhd 2.0, a tool for converting physical Windows systems to virtual formats.

The major plus in this release is support for VHDX, a significant update to the VHD format which offers much-improved performance, increased reliability, and more. Just leave the "Use Vhdx" box checked and the program will create a VHDX file for you.

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Just last month Google and Microsoft came together in an unlikely pairing. This was not a software venture, but a bid to help tackle the problem of child porn online. UK Prime Minister David Cameron has said on numerous occasions that ISPs needed to do more to not only block access to torrent sites -- despite the fact they can be used for perfectly legal downloads -- but also to make it more difficult for children to access pornography. Four major ISPs either already have porn filters in place, or have plans to roll them out.

TalkTalk's filters have been in place for a few years now, Sky's were recently launched and Virgin is piloting a scheme due for full scale roll out at some point in 2014. In the past few days, BT switched on its filters, falling in line with government requests for access to legal porn to be made opt-in -- i.e. blocked by default. So is this having the desired effect? Well, it's very early days, but there are a few observations to be made already.

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I have previously gone on record as being one of those people -- the crowd that wants a smartwatch. My reasoning, however, differs greatly from what Samsung is pushing in its latest Galaxy Gear ad. As a runner, I am an avid wearer of the little wrist accessory. My kind are nothing, if not anal about time, distance and pace; and a watch that can handle an app like MapMyRun while utilizing GPS is a glorious prospect.

Samsung, on the other hand, has gone in a different direction to push its technology. The hardware maker instead goes after the singles crowd, spending two and a half minutes telling guys why this watch will help their social lives, and also, quite possibly, letting women know why they should worry about it.

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This is the final roundup before Christmas and the penultimate one of 2014. Things are very much starting to wind down for the year, and the world of tech is starting to go into something of a hibernation mode. But that's not to say that there hasn't been a fair select of big stories over the past seven days. If you're dreading the prospect of traveling across the country to meet up with family, Microsoft may have a solution -- just turn to Skype instead!

Valve's highly anticipated Steam OS was made available to the public as a beta, so gamers can create their own rigs. Gamers with a lots of spare cash floating around might prefer to opt for a solid gold Xbox One -- but the price tag is an eye-watering £6000 (around $9,800)! For those to whom quality matters, Amazon's announcement that all new shows in 4K Ultra HD will come as great news. For entertainment at slightly lower resolution, Redbox Instant made an appearance on the Kindle Fire HDX -- a tablet that I was quite enamored with. Roku 3 users can also celebrate the arrival of YouTube for their video entertainment.

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Regardless of your beliefs, it's rather difficult to resist a good Christmas movie. There is something soothing about gathering the family around the TV to watch that annual classic, be it Miracle on 34th Street or National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Neither is new, but neither ever seems to get old.

Elf is also no longer particularly new, having been released back in 2003 when we all ran Windows XP, and Google hadn't yet thought about Android or the Play market.

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Christmas is nearly here, and Santa is getting ready for his yearly round of toy deliveries. Of course the days of making wooden soldiers and spinning tops are long gone -- kids today want more hi-tech gear, and Saint Nicholas has had to move with the times.

He no longer has to rely entirely on hand delivering everything in a reindeer powered sleigh either, thanks to advances in parcel delivery like the Hyperloop inspired YuleTube or the Amazon Drone-style Gift-o-Copters, and optical camouflage technology ensures Santa will remain virtually invisible while making deliveries (and enjoying furtive kisses with mommy underneath the mistletoe).

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Christmas is upon us and that means two things -- travel and guilt. While most Americans will be travelling for the holiday, a good portion of them will not be spending it with family. This ultimately leads to the aforementioned guilt. After all, for some, it may be the last Christmas they get to spend with older relatives before they pass away. These people are opting for alternative plans -- how cold! However, Microsoft has a solution -- Skype your family instead.

"According to a recent survey we conducted with Harris Interactive, not everyone will get to be home for the holidays. In fact, three-quarters (77-percent) of Americans will be traveling away from their homes this holiday season, and one in four say they aren't spending time with immediate or extended family this holiday because it's too far to travel. Another 20-percent blame the cost of travel from keeping them apart from their families", says Nicol Addison, Microsoft.

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CyberLink has launched a major new update to its powerful webcam toolset with the release of CyberLink YouCam 6 Standard and CyberLink YouCam 6 Deluxe. Version 6.0 adds a new camera shooting mode and creative photo editing tools alongside a new free Creative Camera companion app.

The latest build also introduces a new calendar view, plus allows users to organize photos using facial recognition technology. It also comes optimized for use with Windows touch screens.

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Microsoft has released Project Siena, a Windows 8 app which allows anyone to create Windows 8 apps, no programming skills required.

Building the interface is as simple as placing, moving and resizing assorted objects on your page: images, videos, buttons, lists, checkboxes, whatever you need.

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Business systems specialist Oracle has announced that it’s reached an agreement to acquire Responsys for $1.5 million. Responsys is one of the leading providers of enterprise-scale, cloud-based business to consumer marketing software.

Buying Responsys extends Oracle's Customer Experience Cloud to create a product that meets the needs of companies with both B2B and B2C marketing requirements. It enables chief marketing officers (CMOs) to run marketing campaigns across email, mobile platforms, social media and the web, it also allows them to operate at a massive scale and across the full consumer lifecycle.

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You've known for a month, providing you cared enough to notice the news. AOL announced that its once prominent media player, Winamp, would cease to exist on December 20, 2013. But before the obituary can even be written, music streaming service Spotify has stepped in with its own tribute.

Today the company announces Spotiamp -- "to honour the engineering skill and passion that goes into building wonderful software that millions of people enjoy we would like to share a small tribute to honor the great legacy of Winamp".

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Television used to be simple. When you only had a few channels delivered via an aerial or a cable, deciding what to watch and where to watch it was easy. But with multi-channel digital services, the ability to watch on mobile devices, catch up with programs you’ve missed and more, it’s now a whole lot more complicated.

Little wonder then that apps which help you work out what to watch are proving popular. YO.TV, the UK's most used TV guide with five million customers, now plans to expand to 50 countries in 14 languages. Available on Google Play and the App Store, YO.TV lets users see listings for all their favorite channels across broadcast providers. Its Now and Next options streamline the scanning process, giving a cross section view of the full channel listings for any given time block. Personalized features let users set themselves reminders on their personal calendars so they don’t miss a favorite show or share their tastes in TV via social media.

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When it comes to browsers, Firefox had long been the king of the customization. The browser revolutionized the usage of themes and extensions to allow the user to have a unique and personal experience. When Chrome was initially released, a lack of extensions caused many web users to turn their noses up at Google's browser. After all, if you want to release new product, it needs to at least surpass existing ones for people to notice.

Well, times have certainly changed -- Chrome has usurped Firefox in both customization and usage statistics. Google's browser has an amazing selection of extensions and themes. In fact, the browser has proved so important and popular, that it even spawned an operating system based on it -- Chrome OS. However, Google now announces that it is changing the policy regarding extensions in the Chrome Web Store. But, is this a good or a bad change?

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